Homemade Seitan

For over year now, I have been a fan and evangelist of seitan, sometimes called Wheat meat or Buddha Food, which is a dough made from the vital gluten of wheat.  But up until recently, I was using store bought packages rather than making my own.

 However, I decided that needed to change.  Here I am, a very outspoken fan of it, so much so that I am writing a cookbook on it, but I had never made it myself.

So I bit the bullet.  I headed to my local Whole Foods for a great big bag of wheat gluten, headed home, and gave it a whirl.  I would like to say I invented the recipe all on my own, but I had some help from the Vegan Lunchcast whose step-by-step tutorial is far better than anything I could do.

For the technique on how to make seitan, I advise checking out his site.  However, I did change up his recipe in a few significant ways.  First, he was trying to make seitan that resembled beef, which is a dense meat.  I was angling to make “buffalo wings” and wanted meat that was moist and a bit more delicate.

Here is what I did.  You will need:

• 2 cups of vital wheat gluten
• 4 tablespoons of All Purpose Flour
• 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast
• 1/2 cup of Braggs
• 2 tablespoons of canola oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced and 4 cloves cut in half
• 1/8 teaspoon of thyme

1. Placed the gluten, All Purpose flour, and yeast in a mixing bowl and mix well.
2. Put 1 1/2 cups of cold water, the Braggs, oil, and minced garlic in a separate bowl and whisk well.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and begin kneading.  I used a Kitchenaide and kneaded for 7 minutes.  Check the consistency of the dough.  If it is too wet, add more All Purpose flour.
4. Take the resulting dough and shape it into a log.  Allow the log to sit for ten minutes.  Cut the Seitan into one-inch-wide strips.
5. Put the strips into a soup pot with 12 cups of cold water, the halved garlic, and the thyme.
6. Bring the water to a boil and simmer for an hour until it floats to the top.  If it has been more than hour, check to make sure that the seitan is not stuck together.
7. Take the seitan out of the water and let it drain before any further cooking.

Enjoy!  I think this recipe has a chicken-like texture when fried and was perfect for mock buffalo wings.  Do you have any seitan recipes?